Two general theorems on superstability of functional equations (Q2350277): Difference between revisions

The authors prove, in a clever and quite elementary way, the superstability of a functional equation of the form \[ \sum_{j=1}^{\infty}a_jf(g_j(t,s))=h(t)f(s) \] whith unknown functions \(f\) (vector-valued) and \(h\) (scalar-valued). Superstability means, roughly speaking, that the approximate solutions of the above equation, i.e., the solutions of the functional inequality \[ \|\sum_{j=1}^{\infty}a_jf(g_j(t,s))-h(t)f(s)\|\leq\delta, \] are either bounded or satisfy the equation itself. The main result, concerning an equation in such a general form, can be applied to a variety of particular functional equations like the Cauchy exponential equation (a generalization of the celebrated result of \textit{J. Baker} et al. [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 74, 242--246 (1979; Zbl 0397.39010)]), the homogeneity equation, equations of d'Alembert, Wilson, Reynolds and many others. The value of the paper is that it explains stability problems not only for a single particular functional equation (as it is in a huge number of recent papers in the field), but it tries to explore more generally the (super)stability phenomenon. This seems to be the desired direction of research in stability theory.